Bloody Windows 10 dammit

[Refrigerator]

My dad just got himself a new laptop and it had win 10 on it.
Took about 30 minutes to boot the laptop to the desktop.
In 30 min i can put a full install of Win7, god dammit.
Bastard OS loads the CPU, bashes the HDD at 100% and eats 2gigs of RAM while it's at it on idle. 
I don't know a thing about Win10 but i don't think this is normal, this chewing 50% of RAM on idle thing.
Also when viewing YT video full screen the damn taskbar doesn't go away.
If Win10 was made to piss people off then Microsoft did a damn good job at it.

[metrologist]

It's not at idle, it's collecting all your data and sending it MS. It has a keylogger and will use your PC and a distribution center to feed the community it's updates (yes, you will be serving MS updates to your community)

[Kevman]

On a 'new' laptop or desktop, Windows 7 was no better. Nor was Vista. Nor XP.

First thing you should always do when buying a new computer from a big name manufacturer is reinstall Windows from media made with the official Windows media creation tool. Preinstalled Windows is almost always full of terrible, performance-killing junk. Its not worth trying to remove it. And its been like that for.... 15 years at least?

At least with Windows 10 this process only takes 20-30 minutes or so since the creation tool includes the updates. With Windows 7 and below, you're looking at a dozen update/reboot iterations after an install at minimum. NO WAY you are installing W7 from blank HD to fully updated in 30 minutes.

My Windows 10 Desktop PC takes less than 5 seconds to boot from power button to login prompt. Its usually ready by the time I move my hand from the button to the keyboard. Windows 10 is also MUCH easier on RAM thanks to memory compression- even Non-windows things like Chrome and games will use much less RAM.

There are plenty of reasons to criticize Windows 10. Performance is not one of them.

[metrologist]

Look, tax season is coming up. I am genuinely concerned about it this time around.

All I mean all the personal data, data that would be different between two different users of the exact same machine and sw builds.

Listen, I had a flip phone with a very cheasy camera. It was not a smart phone at all and I did not have a data plan at all nor any internet on the phone. I did not even have text service. When I got a new smart phone for the first time, the rep asked if I wanted my data from my old phone. I said sure and pulled out my old flip phone, which had been turned off since we started the new purchase. The rep said I won't need that, he'd take care of it. I walked out the store and in the parking lot discovered that all my cheesy photos and my contacts were all on my new phone. How was that possible? They had already swiped all my personal data, my photos and contacts. I believe and will not be convinced otherwise that all these large companies are collecting everything. and I mean all of it. Because they can, there is not precedence in law to stop them, and just cuz they can and you cannot know or stop them. Because our computers and networks are totally insecure. There is no hope for security at all. I do not believe it. The smart folks and hackers see through everything like it was invisible air. The gov is looking too.

You might be able to flip some switches, ha I do not believe they are connected to anything though. They will be reset anyway on the next update. New buttons will appear on the next update to circumvent your settings. They will sneak this in all the time. They will not tell you about it.

You are fortunate to have unlimited bandwidth. I have a limit, but it is not possible to reach that limit 24/7 at the data rate however. So serving stuff to others that does not benefit me and slows my connection, my productivity, and my potential is preempted.

[slicendice]

On a 'new' laptop or desktop, Windows 7 was no better. Nor was Vista. Nor XP.

First thing you should always do when buying a new computer from a big name manufacturer is reinstall Windows from media made with the official Windows media creation tool. Preinstalled Windows is almost always full of terrible, performance-killing junk. Its not worth trying to remove it. And its been like that for.... 15 years at least?

At least with Windows 10 this process only takes 20-30 minutes or so since the creation tool includes the updates. With Windows 7 and below, you're looking at a dozen update/reboot iterations after an install at minimum. NO WAY you are installing W7 from blank HD to fully updated in 30 minutes.

My Windows 10 Desktop PC takes less than 5 seconds to boot from power button to login prompt. Its usually ready by the time I move my hand from the button to the keyboard. Windows 10 is also MUCH easier on RAM thanks to memory compression- even Non-windows things like Chrome and games will use much less RAM.

There are plenty of reasons to criticize Windows 10. Performance is not one of them.

Yep, this is why I bought a laptop with a Windows 10 PURE installation. Only has manufacturer drivers installed as an extra feature, the rest is pure Windows.

Clean installing is the way to go if your PC has a lot of bloat.

My 7 years old laptop re-boots (logoff, reboot, logon) Windows 10 in 15 seconds. A full reboot does not use the Fast Boot function, so it means everything is loaded from scratch.

Anyone who has a new laptop, Windows could also be indexing files for faster file searches and optimizing a lot of .NET binaries for faster loading times. All this reading, writing and high CPU usage will eventually stop.

[tszaboo]

My dad just got himself a new laptop and it had win 10 on it.
Took about 30 minutes to boot the laptop to the desktop.
In 30 min i can put a full install of Win7, god dammit.
Bastard OS loads the CPU, bashes the HDD at 100% and eats 2gigs of RAM while it's at it on idle. 
I don't know a thing about Win10 but i don't think this is normal, this chewing 50% of RAM on idle thing.
Also when viewing YT video full screen the damn taskbar doesn't go away.
If Win10 was made to piss people off then Microsoft did a damn good job at it.

When will people learn: Windows is using 2 gig, beacuse that is the half of your RAM. The RAM is not doing anything if it is empty, so windows uses it to useful stuff, like speeding up processes and pre-loading stuff. If a program needs memory, windows releases it. Currently, my pc uses 5 gig of ram for actual stuff, 6 as cache, 5 as free.
It is not a bug. It is a feature.

[Skimask]

And whatever you do, don't mention that the "new" laptop is running off a dual core Atom proc, with 4GB, and a 5400RPM spinning drive on an ATA (not SATA) bus.
Other than that, I can't think of ANYTHING that would make it slow.

[Galaxyrise]

My win10 laptop boots from cold in about 20 SECONDS, not 20 minutes.  And it boots faster than when it had Win7 on it.

I would be surprised if the slow boot time of OP's laptop is Microsoft's fault.  Perhaps it's already part of a botnet... More likely would be an over-aggressive virus scanner.

Once upon a time Windows would put hard drives into PIO mode if they were having a lot of issues.  If that's still a thing, it would be something else to look for.  It made disk performance abysmal.

If it's an option, formatting the disk and installing the OS yourself without any of the OEM bloatware would be a good way to eliminate a ton of possible causes.

[james_s]

I have to use Windows 10 at work and I primarily run Windows 7 at home. IMHO Win7 is by far the superior product, the difference is like night and day. Win7 feels like a polished commercial product while Win10 feels like 15 year old open source stuff.

[Halcyon]

And whatever you do, don't mention that the "new" laptop is running off a dual core Atom proc, with 4GB, and a 5400RPM spinning drive on an ATA (not SATA) bus.
Other than that, I can't think of ANYTHING that would make it slow.

5400 RPM? You're being a big generous aren't you? Usually in those low-cost machines they go for a 4200 RPM drive because it saves a few dollars.

But back to the OP's point -- 30 minutes?! Something isn't right there. Are you sure the hard disk isn't faulty? Even my piece of shit Acer computer at work boots into Windows 7/10 in about 30 seconds or so.

[Skimask]

5400 RPM? You're being a big generous aren't you? Usually in those low-cost machines they go for a 4200 RPM drive because it saves a few dollars.

Forgot about those "ultra low rpm" drives.  It's been so long since I bought a bottom-of-the-barrel laptop...

[Inflex]

I work on these machines all day, every day.  Most of the time the major slow down on the boot is the bloatware included with the system.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, it's no different to when XP, Vista, or 7 came out (we'll ignore ME ).

By all accounts in my opinion, consumer laptops should really be shipped with SSDs now, they're as cheap/cheaper than spinning rust at the trade-off of outright capacity.

Definitely go through and turn off all the privacy-eroding / data-consuming aspects of W10, especially the update-sharing aspect too, particularly if you're running off a limited-GB/mth link.

Disable almost everything in msconfig/taskman (Startup), remove all the bloatware.  Things like Norton/Trend/McAfee "complete security" solutions are also terrible culprits for breaking systems at the knees.

[rrinker]

 My clean, no bloatware installs of Win 10 boot in seconds, of course all my machines have SSDs. Machines from major vendors that come with all sorts of add on extra programs and demo programs have ALWAYS had startup problems because of all the extra garbage. Clearly, pissing off the customer is a distant second to the money raked in by including all that third party garbage in the build.

 I don't see any memory issues, either. I've been using this laptop all day now, multiple applications open, multiple browsers and multiple tabs in each one, plus connected to a VPN and remoted to over a dozen servers (now logged off). Current memory load is sitting at 3.7GB and that's still with Outlook open and multiple Chrome tabs plus some file shares.

[james_s]

I've seen a lot of people raving about boot time, never really understood all the fuss over that particular metric. I generally boot my machine once in a day at most, usually more like once every few weeks and the rest of the time it just goes to sleep. I don't care if it takes 10 seconds to boot or over a minute, either way it will go from cold & dark to fully up and ready by the time I'm settled in my chair.

Side by side I've observed Win10 does boot very slightly faster than Win7 but the difference is pretty much negligible and both slow down over time.

[Halcyon]

I've seen a lot of people raving about boot time, never really understood all the fuss over that particular metric. I generally boot my machine once in a day at most, usually more like once every few weeks and the rest of the time it just goes to sleep. I don't care if it takes 10 seconds to boot or over a minute, either way it will go from cold & dark to fully up and ready by the time I'm settled in my chair.

Side by side I've observed Win10 does boot very slightly faster than Win7 but the difference is pretty much negligible and both slow down over time.

I'm with you on that one. Boot time for me is not important as long as the applications and processes run nicely. I remember back in the 1990's it was a bit of a "race" between my mates who had the "fastest" computer in terms of boot time, but that's about all it ever was. These days I can go grab a glass of water or focus on something else for a minute, it's no big deal.

[Inflex]

I'm with you on that one. Boot time for me is not important as long as the applications and processes run nicely.

(emphasis mine)

That's the crux.   The thing is, boot times usually have a moderate causal correlation with the overall system performance, it's like the first date of how the system is going to be, it's symptomatic ( from a tech perspective ).   As for the point of shaving 1 or 2 seconds off here or there once the boot times are reasonable, absolutely, it's a case of diminishing returns and rather pointless.

[james_s]

When comparing two machines of different hardware configurations on the same OS then yes I'd agree that boot time has some amount of correlation to overall system performance. When comparing two different operating systems on the same hardware I would argue that boot time is worthless as a measure of overall performance. A lot of what they do to achieve faster boot time is to delay the loading of anything not essential to display the desktop until after the desktop is visible, then continue loading more stuff in the background. Obviously if you strip out all the nice visual stuff it's going to make some small improvement in performance but is it enough to even matter these days? I could throw out all the furniture and decorations from my house and it would make walking through it faster and more efficient but it wouldn't be a very pleasant place to live.

[Halcyon]

I'm with you on that one. Boot time for me is not important as long as the applications and processes run nicely.

(emphasis mine)

That's the crux.   The thing is, boot times usually have a moderate causal correlation with the overall system performance, it's like the first date of how the system is going to be, it's symptomatic ( from a tech perspective ).   As for the point of shaving 1 or 2 seconds off here or there once the boot times are reasonable, absolutely, it's a case of diminishing returns and rather pointless.

Absolutely. Shaving seconds off booting the OS is pointless for me. It takes just as long to initialise the USB controllers, RAID controller etc... etc... than it does to load Windows 7.

[rrinker]

 I'll tell you where boot time matters, when you are building systems. I've become very accustomed to the super fast boot time of virtual machines - it is painful almost to have to reboot a physical server. When you're doing this all day, every day, it is a major factor in productivity. Multiple reboots are required to build a Windows server from scratch, join it to an Active Directory Domain, install various roles and features, get the updates caught up, and install whatever third party applications might be needed.

 My main desktop boots in seconds, but rarely needs to, so no, it's not really that big a deal. My laptop, since I am constantly moving around with it, it's nice that I can flip it open and boot up in seconds to do what I need. Some days I'm in one place, boot it up and never reboot until I shut down at the end of the day, but other times I am setting it up and taking it down several times.

[Inflex]

Obviously if you strip out all the nice visual stuff it's going to make some small improvement in performance but is it enough to even matter these days? I could throw out all the furniture and decorations from my house and it would make walking through it faster and more efficient but it wouldn't be a very pleasant place to live.

I'm not talking about stripping out the Windows services/functionality, or services that are on auto-deferred startup, I'm talking about machines that come in loaded to the hilt with things like;

Adobe Reader update checker
Norton update checker
iTunes update checker
Wildtangent Games starter
Spotify launch on startup
iTunes launch on startup
Mozilla (Firefox) update checker
Flash update checker
Java update checker
Mindshare LLC GodKnowsWhat starter
uTorrent start (Oh dear god when I see this I know the system is 99% likely just infected to the hilt)
McAfee security check
ASUS/HP/Toshiba/Acer System check / updater
My Printer checker/updater
Webcam based auto login
 ....and so on.

Sure you can go wild and go mangle your system using BlackViper service shave downs, but that's not what I'm referring to.

[Brumby]

I agree.  The first thing I do is go through and check what's getting loaded at startup - and disable anything that irks me.

My particular pet hate is to have services that are started at boot time that are running 'just in case' you want to run this or that.  Some of these I never use and others, once in a blue moon and I get downright ticked off when these are services that will get started by the main program anyway.

I also have an aversion to iWhatever.  Hate that "We know how to run your computer." attitude.

Problem is - MS is running down that path too.

[Inflex]

I agree.  The first thing I do is go through and check what's getting loaded at startup - and disable anything that irks me.

Special mention goes to Autoruns for letting you quickly/easily eliminate those items that are embedded in the 'scheduled' areas, that's definitely on the list right after cleaning up with msconfig.

[Inflex]

It was a new machine. No Windows ever took 30 minutes to boot. It was in all likleyhood frustration with the bloatware installation and possibly upgrades.
Definitely any unwanted bloatware must be removedif for no other reason than removing the need to ignore it.

If you do a whole run of "yes, yes, accept, yes, yes" through the initial setup on almost any brand-name machine then it most certainly the sanctioned bloatware been having a glorious time unleashing its insatiable appetite for CPU cycles and HDD I/O as it ran amok gluttonising itself until finally rolling over on the verge of exploding and handing [some] control back to the user

[strangersound]

High memory usage is not a big issue. Win10 will not free unused memory in order to accelerate program reload. When available memory is not enough, it will automatically clean memory. Therefore there's nothing to worry about. Anyway modern laptops have at least 8GB of RAM, even the cheapest ones have 4GB of RAM.

I seriously disagree with this assertion. High memory usage is an issue. There's not really anything that an OS should be doing to use these absurd amounts of ram. Windows 10 isn't essentially doing anything more than any previous version. It's all bloat and graphical waste of resources, in addition to doing all kinds of background activity, most of which is probably unethical. An OS should use as few system resources as possible so application have as much available as possible.
The consumption of ram by OS's, browsers, and websites drives me bonkers. A recent version of Chrome with a Facebook tab can go over a gig right away. That's just nuts. It's the result of loads of bloat on the browser end and all the script that a modern website is running (doing God knows what). Good web design principles used to be a thing, and most of it has been thrown right out the window in favor of the latest "pretty flashing lights". It's the same thing with OS design.
As far as I'm concerned, we're going backwards. It's not progress when the latest stuff is using more and more resources to do the same tasks.
I remember when you could have 47 tabs in Chrome open, with half of them YouTube videos (Flash, a hog in itself) cued up waiting to be played. Now you even try that and you'll crash your system.   

[SingedFingers]

They have and they found it's a ballsack but it's too hard to fix the castle now. Look at the small files being stored in the MFT on NTFS. This can make it two orders of magnitude slower than pretty much everything else on random small file writes. This fucks over anyone storing lots of source files on disk and movig them in ans out of VCS systems.

The  there's the scheduler which implements the  "masturbate like a wild monkey" algorithm when the IO load goes up beyond a certain limit, enters hysteresis and the whole house of cards falls down.

(windows dev by day)